it would long since have been forgotten, but no one can get a sight of Harrow-on-the-Hill, and of the school whose fame is spread far as our language extends, without being reminded of its founder. We do not look for the establishment of schools in our country modelled after the precise pattern of those of England; they would not be suited to the state of society here. But the latter have some features, which, to say the least, are worthy of our careful consideration.

We are well persuaded that no better service could be rendered to the cause of education in any of our older states, than by the erection, through private munificence, of an academy (to use our American term), in a well-chosen locality, which should be copied after Winchester, or Rugby, in all points except those which are distinctively English,-an academy in which the education of a certain number would be free, while other pupils paid their own bills: an academy in which the pupils would be stimulated to study diligently, and induced to stay long enough to be thoroughly educated, not only by prizes, but by exhibitions or scholarships in our best colleges, such as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, exhibitions which would defray the student's board and tuition during his residence at college. If any of our men of wealth could be excited, as we have said, properly to endow such a school, he would be doing good in two ways, i. e., he would confer a blessing in the locality where the school chanced to be established, and on the college or the university with which he might connect it. In order to raise our colleges and universities to a higher level than that which they have as yet reached, we need collegiate schools thoroughly equipped, in which our youth can be trained, as those are in England, who are preparing for the university, and hope to win some of its prizes; or as the cadets are trained in our own West Point. To make our colleges efficient instruments of a large and liberal culture, the work which they are now compelled to do during the first year of their course, should be done elsewhere. And we are inclined to believe, that if collegiate schools, such as we have suggested, were established, the indirect benefits they would confer upon the college with which they might be wholly, or partially connected, would out

weigh those produced even by the founding of a new professorship.

The history of the schools and the universities of England furnishes many striking illustrations of the tenacity with which antiquated usages, and even positive abuses, that have become hoary with age, are maintained. In not a few cases, the evident designs of large-hearted men, who lived three or four centuries ago, in a state of society wholly different from the present, have been absolutely defeated by a bigoted adherence to the letter of their statutes. Then there are multitudes of persons, not wanting in intelligence, who dislike change of any sort, though it be from bad to good, or from good to better; and the feeling is strengthened by the notion that the change proposed will interfere with the vested rights of somebody. But great as are the obstacles that have hitherto stood in the way of academic reform, they have begun to yield. There is a growing determination to remodel the schools and universities so as to adapt them to meet the wants of the times, and already improvements have been made in both of them, of which no one dared to dream twenty years ago. In our country, we are never required to fight against men's love for the antiquated. The tendencies here are all the other way. Precedent, prescription, vested rights, are scarcely allowed the weight that belongs to them. Under such circumstances, we should be ashamed if we allow "the old country" to outstrip us in the march of improvement. So far as regards the common school there is no danger of such a result, but we have still much to learn from her, in what relates to the higher order of seminaries,the schools intended to train and develope the thinker and the scholar.

ART. IV.-The Raising of Lazarus; treated exegetically with special reference to recent infidel assaults.

THE raising of Lazarus is, on several accounts, the most momentous of our Lord's miracles. More than any other it sets him forth as "the Resurrection and the Life." In its immediate results it became the outward occasion of his death, and as his last great work it stands out as the presage of his own victory over death.

The omission of the account of this stupendous miracle by the synoptists has been used by hostile critics as an argument against its credibility, and reasoning from the less to the greater, as an argument against the trustworthiness of the fourth Evangelist in particular, and against the credibility of the whole evangelical record in general. The ribald Woolston pronounces this miracle "brimful of absurdities," "a contexture of folly and fraud,"* and Spinoza, on the authority of Bayle, "said to his friends, that if he could believe the resurrection of Lazarus, he would break to pieces his whole system and embrace without repugnance the ordinary faith of Christians." Of course Spinoza knew very well that the kind of proof he demanded could not be given, and that after all that can be said has been said, the matter finally resolves itself in the veracity of Christ, who declared that Lazarus was dead, John xi. 14; Spinoza did not and would not believe the words of Christ, and his declaration is therefore only an empty bravado.

The explanations of the silence of the synoptists are numerous, but more or less unsatisfactory, and it is doubtful whether a wholly satisfactory solution can be given; this much is certain, however, that the want of a satisfactory solution of the mysterious silence of the synoptists, does not affect the credibility of any or all the canonical Gospels, for that rests on a foundation too firm and too well attested to be weakened by an

1

* Diss. on Miracles V., cf. N. Lardner's Vindications, Works, ii. 1—54. Dict. s. v. "Spinoza."

isolated circumstance of this kind. The most important explanations are:

1. That fear of drawing down persecution on Lazarus and his family during their life-time, caused the first three Evangelists to pass over in silence the account of this great miracle; while John, writing at a later period and outside of Palestine, was not fettered by that reason. This is the view of Grotius, Olshausen, and Lange, who however combines it with other considerations. With certain modifications it is also adopted by Plumptre (in Smith's Dict. of the Bible,) but rejected as extravagant by Alford and Trench.

2. That the synoptists confine themselves to the miracles wrought by our Lord in Galilee, and hardly touch upon any fact lying outside that limit, (Neander, Meyer); but while this explanation establishes the consistency of the synoptists, it really does not answer the question itself, viz., "Why do all three persist in silence on the miracle?"

3. That the reluctance of Lazarus to draw the veil from his real resurrection from the dead, analogous to a similar reluctance in persons raised from the death of sin, may have induced the earlier Evangelists to honour his sensitiveness in suppressing the account of his miraculous restoration to life. This is the view propounded by Plumptre (1. c.), but although ingenious as a conjecture, will hardly carry conviction to minds of a less speculative constitution.

4. That the nature of the Gospels, each of which being an individual contemplation and composition of the life of Jesus, rendered it necessary that only such historical matter should be received as agreed with and was adapted to the plan of the whole. This is the explanation which Lange superadds to that of Grotius and Neander, without, however, shedding much light on the subject; for while there is doubtless truth in his statement, it is equally true that the synoptists record many things in common, and that the fourth Evangelist narrates many things equally recorded by the synoptists.

The explanations are more or less unsatisfactory, and as they leave the question itself pretty much untouched, we prefer the difficulty unexplained to so-called explanations which increase and complicate it, satisfied that whatever causes may VOL. XXXVIII.—NO. II. 32

have operated in the silence of the synoptists, the fact that the bosom friend of Jesus records the miracle is the best and strongest proof of its historic reality and truthfulness. Of the doubts and insinuations of Strauss we shall have occasion to treat by and by.

The question, "Who was Lazarus?" has been variously answered, although the only positive data are those derived from the Gospel of St.. John, which contain little more than that he was the brother of Mary and Martha, and lived with them at Bethany; that he died, and was by our Lord restored to life. We should content ourselves with the simple recital of these particulars, but in the laboured attempt of Strauss to make out that Lazarus was a mythical character, his reasoning is so characteristic and his conclusions so extraordinary, that we feel constrained to analyze and expose them.

From a comparison of Matt. xxvi. 6, sq.; Mark xiv. 3, sq.; Luke vii. 36, 44, and John xii. 1, sq., it appears that the first two Evangelists narrate that a woman, whose name is not given, anointed our Lord a few days before the last passover, in the house of Simon, the leper, at Bethany, while the third Evangelist records a similar transaction at an earlier period, in the house of one Simon, a Pharisee, by a woman "which was a sinner," without specifying the name of the city or village where it took place, and St. John relates that six days before the passover, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, anointed the feet of Jesus at Bethany. These statements of the four Evangelists, Strauss places in juxtaposition; arranges, disarranges, and rearranges in the most arbitrary manner, and after a great 'deal of finessing and oracular commenting, reaches the conclusion that the fourth Evangelist combined the notices of the synoptists in order to find a convenient locality for the resurrection of Lazarus, which, according to him, was a myth, invented and fabricated by the author of the fourth Gospel, which, by-the-bye, he pronounces to have been written in the second century. (Leben Jesu, 1. ii. ch. 2, 77.) If we are to enter the domain of conjecture, the aforesaid data lead to very different results. The anointing related by the first two Evangelists is essentially different from that recorded by the third as to time, place, circumstances, and person, and also in all its